


Après un rêve

by moonlighten



Series: Rookery Downs [5]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-10-26 09:30:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10784106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlighten/pseuds/moonlighten
Summary: Dylan welcomes a new lodger into his home. Alasdair is suspicious of his motives.





	Après un rêve

**Author's Note:**

> As I nearly lost all of my RD fics due to my last laptop's sad demise - I really need to start backing up my files better... - I decided I would post a few on here after recovering them, as I've been meaning to do for ages, whilst the going is good...

* * *

 

 

Dylan and Alasdair might have managed to fix the hole that yesterday’s storm had ripped into the manor’s roof, but today’s has taken its toll on both of them instead.  
  
Dylan’s clothes are heavy with rainwater, sticking cold and clammy to skin that he’s grateful is largely numb thanks to the frigid wind that had buffeted them all afternoon – hard enough that he’s still surprised that it hadn’t sent one or both of them flying off the side of the building – and he can barely see past the thick knotted tangles it has snarled into his hair.  
  
When they stumble back inside the house, Michael takes one look at them and then immediately takes himself off upstairs at a brisk trot, which makes Dylan feel as though they must both look close to collapse considering his little brother’s reluctance to break out of his usual slow, rolling amble for anything short of imminent catastrophe.  
  
“Grab some towels and clothes for us whilst you’re up there, Mikey,” Alasdair bellows after him, because he sometimes seems convinced that Michael needs step-by-step instructions to do anything more complex than finding his own arse with both hands.  
  
Michael, to his credit, doesn’t pause to remonstrate that he’s quite capable of calculating the impact the two states ‘drenched’ and ‘dry’ might have on a person’s relative comfort, and then acting accordingly. Dylan imagines he has a great deal to say on the subject in the privacy of his own head, however.  
  
“I suppose you’ll be wanting a lift home,” Alasdair says once Michael has disappeared from view. It sounds more like an accusation than an offer, even though it’s dropping dark outside and the wind is still howling, the rain still lashing at the windows, and the buses that run from the village in the direction of Dylan’s house are as unreliable as they are infrequent.  
  
“I think it’s the least you can do, really,” Dylan says, toeing at the back of his left shoe with his right foot. It's wedged there as tightly as if it had been glued on, likely because his socks are so waterlogged that they’ve swollen to several times their normal volume. “It’s your fault I’m stuck here without my car, after all. If you hadn’t kidnapped me—"  
  
“I didn’t fucking kidnap you,” Alasdair growls defensively. His aggrieved glare disappears momentarily behind his sodden jumper as he yanks it up over his head, but is twice as fierce when it does re-emerge, as though the brief respite from Dylan’s face has only served to make him more annoyed by the sight of it. “You’re a grown man, for fuck’s sake; you could have just told me to piss off.”  
  
Dylan had tried, but it had been seven o’clock in the morning and he was only half-awake and uncaffeinated, so hardly at his steadfast best. He hadn’t even finished blinking the sleep out of his eyes by the time he found himself at the manor.  
  
“I did have plans, you know.” Dylan dislodges his shoe with one last, determined push and it skids across the hallway floor, trailing a small stream across the tiles behind it. “Plans that didn’t involve this sodding house. Or you, for that matter.”  
  
“And you think I didn’t?” Alasdair hisses back, angling his own boots towards Dylan as he kicks them off his feet. They don’t travel quite far enough to connect with him, just far enough that they splatter Dylan’s trousers with yet more muddy water. “I’ve got work in a couple of hours, too. At least you can—"  
  
The time-honoured conclusion of that sentence – ‘go home and watch telly in your pants for the rest of the day if you want’, which appears to be the epitome of untrammelled decadence in Alasdair’s mind – is interrupted by the arrival of Michael carrying a mountain of towels and dry clothes so large he can barely see over the top of them.  
  
“I couldn’t find any of your clothes,” he says apologetically, tipping the teetering pile until the topmost portion of it starts to fall in Dylan’s direction. “You’ll have to make do with some of Aly’s.”

 

 

* * *

  
  
  
Alasdair laughs himself hoarse at the sight of Dylan practically swimming inside clothes designed to hold another half a person again. Dylan thinks it should probably feel like an affront to what little dignity he has, but he finds himself smiling, regardless, partly because it’s good to hear his brother laugh – it doesn’t happen half as often as it should – even if he’s the butt of the joke, but mostly because he discovers it’s simply impossible to take _himself_ seriously when he has to keep a constant tight hold on the waistband of the voluminous trousers to avoid flashing his otherwise bare arse to the world.  
  
It makes his walk across the driveway to Alasdair’s waiting car slow and ponderous, but apparently hilarious enough to watch that whatever tension might have remained between himself and his brother has completely evaporated by the time he throws himself down into the passenger seat, relieved to have reached his goal without exposing himself but dripping wet once again.  
  
Alasdair wipes tears out of the corners of his eyes with one hand and holds out a long piece of garden twine with the other. “Thought you might need this,” he says, his voice little more than a gasp that he only just manages to squeeze out between the chuckles he seems to be trying very hard to subdue, given the florid colour of his cheeks.  
  
Dylan snatches the proffered twine with an abruptness that pretends an irritation that he can’t quite force himself to feel. “Pity you didn’t think of it sooner,” he says.  
  
“Suppose so,” Alasdair says, but in a way that sounds not in the least bit regretful or sincere, leading Dylan to believe that he may well have been set up to make a spectacle of himself from the start.  
  
This, too, fails to force his anger into manifesting as it probably should, and Dylan simply gets to work making himself a makeshift belt for his borrowed trousers – using the same knots he’s seen Alasdair make in string countless times when using it for just that purpose – whilst his brother’s chuckles gradually fade to the occasional amused snort and then, finally, silence.  
  
“Got it all out of your system now?” Dylan asks, tucking the trailing ends of twine beneath his belt loops to secure them before leaning back in his seat. The movement makes the loose collar of his shirt ride up around his chin, and his nostrils fill with the mingled scent of mothballs, stale cigarette smoke and Deep Heat that still lingers faintly on all of their Granddad’s old clothes somehow, even after all this time. He doesn’t know how Alasdair can bear to wear them as often as he does.  
  
“Think so,” Alasdair says, throwing Dylan one last, wide grin before starting up the car, which shudders into life with a pained whine of effort and sudden choking stink of burning rubber.  
  
Alasdair keeps his peace until they reach the gatehouse which marks the end of the manor’s long drive, whereupon he asks, “So, what were you planning on doing today, anyway?”  
  
Dylan looks askance at him, but, judging by the relaxed set of his expression, the question is no more than the honest curiosity his casual tone suggested, not an attempt to restart their aborted argument.  
  
“Well, I’d thought it might be a nice idea to help Llewellyn settle in a little – show him around the neighbourhood and so on – seeing as though it’s his first full day living at…” Dylan pauses, wondering if his house should still be referred to as ‘my’ seeing as though he now has a lodger, or if it’s now transitioned to ‘our’. Both choices make him feel slightly uncomfortable – albeit for entirely different reasons – so he eventually continues with an entirely neutral: “At the house.”  
  
“I think you’re too trusting, leaving him alone in your home like that,” Alasdair says, scowling.  
  
“I hardly had any choice in the matter, did I?” Dylan reminds him, a hint of his long-delayed annoyance finally flaring into life  
  
“You’ve only known him for, what? A couple of weeks or so? There’s no telling what kind of weirdo he really is. I mean, he could be wanking into your sock drawer as we speak.”  
  
The suggestion’s so bizarre that Dylan isn’t sure whether he should just laugh it off or be offended for Llewellyn’s sake. In his confusion, he can only manage to scrape together enough presence of mind to offer the completely inconsequential observation that: “I don’t even have a sock drawer.”  
  
“Into your shoes, then,” Alasdair amends smoothly. “Or nicking everything that isn’t nailed down. Or moving the bodies into—”  
  
“I thought you liked him?” Dylan interposes, still feeling completely bemused, and wondering where the hell this sudden suspicion has sprung from. Alasdair had looked to take quite a shine to Llewellyn when they happened to cross paths one night in the pub, judging by the number of times Dylan had to pry his drunken brother off the poor man, who gave every indication of appreciating bone-cracking hugs from near-strangers even less than most people.  
  
“Doesn’t mean I trust him,” Alasdair says, hitching one shoulder briefly.  
  
Dylan supposes he probably shouldn’t either, because his brother’s right, he does barely even know Llewellyn. Once again, however, he can’t summon up the emotions the logical part of his brain insists he should be feeling.  
  
“He’s never been anything but nice to me,” he says, shaking his head. “A bit quiet, maybe, but he’s always very polite.”  
  
It’s hardly a ringing endorsement – more the sort of thing he reports to the parents of those pupils whose only distinction is never being a disruption in any of his classes – but every word of it is true, at least.  
  
Truthful it might be, but the statement doesn’t appease Alasdair one iota. “Of course he seems nice at school,” he presses on mercilessly. “Everyone’s on their best behaviour at work. But behind closed doors—"  
  
“He likely doesn’t masturbate over other people’s personal belongings,” Dylan finishes for his brother. “Honestly, Aly, I don’t think I have anything to worry about.”

 

 

* * *

  
  
  
What Llewellyn does do behind closed doors, apparently, is practice the violin.  
  
Its faint strains, and an even fainter glimmer of light, are the only signs of life in Dylan’s house when he and Alasdair arrive at it, both seeping through the curtained window which is now Llewellyn’s.  
  
A faint smile tugs at the corners of Alasdair’s mouth as they approach the front door, and proximity to the source pulls scattered notes into a familiar form. “Tchaikovsky,” he says half a second after Dylan draws breath to voice the name. He cocks his head a little more and then adds, “He’s pretty good.”  
  
“I don’t know why you sound so surprised,” Dylan says, giving his brother a quick shove to the small of the back on Llewellyn’s behalf. “He _is_ a music teacher.”  
  
“What difference does that make?” Alasdair asks, and then, predictably, starts spouting off the same tired aphorism Dylan must have heard from him a hundred times or more since he first announced his intention to do his PGCE. “Those who can, do. Those who can’t—"  
  
Dylan shoves him again – for himself as well as Llewellyn this time, along with the honour of all of their colleagues at Rookery Downs – hard enough that it sounds to knock the air out of his lungs and cuts him off mid-word. “Watch yourself, or you won’t be getting that cup of tea I promised you.”  
  
The warning doesn’t stop Alasdair from smirking, but he does refrain from completing his sentence. Dylan suspects it’s the promised slice of Mrs Evans' chocolate cake, rather than the tea it will accompany, that holds his tongue.  
  
Dylan nods in satisfaction, and then unlocks and pushes open the front door. The music’s volume increases as he does, but only just, which makes Dylan think that Llewellyn might be playing with a deliberate softness in deference to the new neighbours he has yet to meet. It would be very courteous of him if so – and the idea makes Dylan smile a little – but ultimately pointless, as Mrs Evans to their right is almost deaf, and the house on the left has been empty since Dylan himself moved in and shows no sign of selling any time soon.  
  
“Move your arse,” Alasdair says, jamming his knee firmly into the back of Dylan’s thigh until he has no choice but to stumble through the open doorway into the hall to avoid landing flat on his face. He then ignores Dylan’s cursing in favour of stepping around his crouched and agonised form to peer thoughtfully up the stairs. “Suppose I’d best go and see if Llewellyn wants some tea, too.”  
  
“I’ll ask him,” Dylan says, straightening up quickly even though the sudden movement makes his abused leg muscles twinge painfully. He doubts Llewellyn will be best pleased to see Alasdair appear unexpectedly at his bedroom door after all the unwanted physical contact his brother tried to subject him to the last time they met. “You go and put the kettle on.”  
  
Alasdair’s eyes narrow, and Dylan expects him to complain about being made to do work when he’s a guest, but when he opens his mouth, it’s only to voice a concern about the size of the slice of cake he is to expect once it’s been shared between the three of them rather than the usual two, and he's quite happy to comply with Dylan’s request after he’s been reassured that there’s plenty to go around.  
  
Potentially intimidating brother safely relocated to the kitchen, Dylan sets off towards Llewellyn’s room. Halfway up the stairs, the music drifting down them slowly fades away, but by the time he reaches the landing at their apex, a new melody has begun swelling to fill the ringing space it left behind.  
  
Dylan’s chest clenches almost sickeningly tight when he recognises what it is; his swiftly inhaled gasp of surprise striking a sucker punch against the suddenly solid wall of his ribs so brutal that it makes them sting.  
  
It’s Fauré’s _Après un rêve_ , soundtrack to Dylan’s futile longing for Declan Roberts, Laura Jackson, Gareth Moore, Stephanie Mackenzie and every other person he fancied himself in love with until he discovered The Smiths in his mum’s old record collection and Morrissey started to accompany his heartbreak, instead.  
      
Dylan forgets not only the cardinal rule of being a good housemate but simple politeness, too, in his eagerness to hear the music better. He gently eases open Llewellyn’s door without knocking, reasoning – though only after the fact, when it’s really just an excuse to salve his own conscience – that the abrupt sound would serve to break Llewellyn’s concentration, thus ruining his practice of the piece by interrupting it before it reaches its conclusion.  
  
The room is lit solely by a single small desk lamp – the one thing apart from his violin that Llewellyn has unpacked – set upon a dog-eared cardboard box that has been labelled, somewhat cryptically, ‘STUFF’ with a neat hand and thick black pen. It throws a mellow circle of light across the bare floorboards that warms one side of Llewellyn’s body whilst throwing the other into almost full darkness, and picks out small points of light on the polished wood of his bow he draws it slowly across the violin's strings.  
  
His hair is unbound, and has fallen across his brow as he bows his head over his instrument, obscuring what little remains of his face that hasn’t already been swallowed up by shadows. Dylan imagines his eyes are closed, though, just as his own eyes are closing, so that all that remains is the music; soft and more mournful than Dylan has ever heard it before.  
  
He can’t help but wonder if makes Llewellyn’s heart ache as much as Dylan’s own does, and, if so, if he’s thinking of anyone in particular – someone long lost, perhaps – so that he can imbue each note with such keening melancholy.  
  
“ _Dans un sommeil que charmait ton image_ ,” Dylan finds himself whispering without really meaning to. “ _Je rêvais le bonheur, ardent mirage_ —"  
  
The song stops abruptly with a dissonant screech which makes Dylan’s eyes fly open with the aghast realisation that he might not been speaking quite as quietly as he’d intended. Llewellyn’s own eyes are wide and he looks just as horrified as Dylan feels when they rise to meet his. His bow skips tunelessly over the violin's strings as his arm slowly falls to hang limp against his side.  
  
“I was just…” Dylan begins, but the rest of his words catch uselessly behind the thick lump embarrassment has built in his throat. Which is probably a good thing, because he had no idea what he was about to say. Strangely, he feels as though he’d walked in on something far more personal than the inappropriate wanking Alasdair had tried to convince him was going on in his absence.  
  
Shamefully, even though he’s the wronged party, Llewellyn regains his composure far more quickly than Dylan. “Sorry,” he says, untucking the violin from under his chin and then hurrying to put it back in its case, which is lying open on his bed. “I didn’t hear you come in. I didn’t think you’d be back so early, otherwise I would have…”  
  
Dylan mentally inserts, ‘locked my door,’ into the silence Llewellyn leaves as his voice trails away, and cringes slightly. “No, I’m the one who should be apologising,” he insists. “I shouldn’t have just barged in on you like that.”  
  
“It’s okay,” Llewellyn says, though Dylan thinks the dismissal smacks of landlord appeasement rather than a reflection of the other man’s true feelings; an impression that’s reinforced when Llewellyn continues with: “It is your house.”  
  
“That’s no excuse, and, besides, it your house, too, now. I can promise you it won’t happen again, it’s just…” Dylan knows he should stop himself, because his behaviour was unconscionable and it’s piling insult on top of injury to attempt justification, but, as is so often the case, he can’t quite seem to stop his stupid, nervous mouth from continuing to flap. “It’s just that that’s one of my favourite pieces and you were playing it so beautifully, I’m afraid I got a little carried away. I’ve always wished I could play an instrument, but I’m afraid I couldn’t even master the recorder. Aly used to play the violin when he was a kid, but he had this awful habit of hacking away at the strings so it sounded like someone…”  
  
Even in the dim light, Dylan can see that Llewellyn’s cheeks are starting to pink. It could be a reaction to the compliment Dylan had just paid him – buried, as it was, under a liberal heaping of shite – but he thinks the blush infinitely more likely to be born out of a nervous apprehension about being stuck listening to Dylan monologing endlessly at him yet again, without even the prospect of eventual escape to fortify himself.  
  
“Would you like a cup of tea?” Dylan forces himself to say, interrupting his flow before desperation drives Llewellyn into feeling he has to, instead.  
  
“I’d love one, thank you,” Llewellyn says, both looking and sounding relieved.

 

 

* * *

  
  
  
“You’ve poisoned that piece for me, you know,” Alasdair says without looking up from the cups he’s pouring milk into when Dylan joins him in the kitchen. “That and fucking _Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now_. I hear them and all I can see is you moping around the place for weeks on end, whinging about how you were going to die alone because some pimply wanker ignored you after rugby practice or something.”  
  
Dylan remembers his despair then as rather more romantic and existential, but he supposes that almost a decade of distance from it might have allowed him to paint his memories in a somewhat more favourable light.  
  
“Sorry,” Dylan says, though he doesn’t really mean it. His memories of Alasdair’s unsympathetic response to said despair – overwrought though it may have been in retrospect – are, on the other hand, exquisitely clear, and unknowingly ruining a couple of tunes for him seems like quite satisfying revenge.  
  
Alasdair glances towards him, and apparently sees something in Dylan’s expression that he wasn’t aware was there, because he sighs heavily and then says, “Just because you take to your bed with Goethe every time that scrawny arsehole you work with ignores you yet a-fucking-gain doesn’t mean other people do the same sort of thing.”  
  
“I don’t know what you mean,” Dylan says, shifting uncomfortably under his brother’s dryly amused scrutiny. “I’ve never done anything of the sort.”  
  
“Byron, then,” Alasdair says, because he’s known Dylan since practically the moment he first drew breath, rendering it almost impossible to keep even the most private of his failings a secret from him for long. “And what I mean, Dyl, is that it’s probably nothing but music. Don’t start worrying yourself over him because of it.”  
  
Which, as he doubtless also already knows, is far easier for him to say than it will be for Dylan to do.

 

 


End file.
